C64 Month: Q is for QUEDEX!

Stavros Fasoulas was a highly revered name in the C64 scene in the late ‘80s. After making the simple but effective Sanxion and the outstandingly presented Delta, everyone was keen to see what C64-pushing classic was coming next. The result was a maze exploration game called Quedex.

Now, I’m not a fan of Quedex. It was a bit too cerebral for me, not to mention brutally difficult, but I’m still going to recommend it here because it taught me a valuable lesson: not every single game has to be for me.

You see kids, back in the ‘80s, it was actually completely possible to play every single game ever. There were maybe 50 games released a month for the C64 at its peak and if you had lots of spare time, money or a reliable supply of blank floppy disks, it was reasonable to expect that you would get through them all. And that’s exactly what I did for a long, long time, and was pretty good at most of them.

But not Quedex. Quedex was tough and unfair and everyone loved it except for me and that just felt weird and wrong. I actually ended up getting mad at people who talked about it at school! How could people be enjoying something I didn’t? Surely there’s something wrong with them, or with the reviewers who said nice things about it, or my “evaluation copy”. Or maybe there was something wrong with me. I like video games, and Quedex is a video game, so surely I must like it?

Nope. Not everything is for me. Not everything is for you, either. Maybe bear that in mind the next time you feel like arguing with someone who is enjoying something they like.